[paulhar]

A lot of ground to cover on this thread. First, the lighter side...

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I also believe the generic defense argument is somewhat "hog"wash

ROFL is too calm - when I read this I had to excuse myself to the restroom where I could laugh for the next five minutes without anybody thinking I was totally crazy - this was better than anything I saw on "Last Comic Standing".

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Now, what is the definition of a "well known" system or a well known convention? This is where you run into trouble. What is well known in one country may certainly not be well known in another. Very few know/play those abominations Sayc or Flannery over here eg. Yet most play some form of crash/ocr/rco two opening that you mentioned.

Every country must have a large popluation of players that play some natural system similar to SAYC - maybe with weak NT's. I'm sure that almost anybody that knows how to defend against anything knows how to defend against a natural system. And Flannery - some people in Flight A don't know how to defend that here in the US either. IMO opponents of Flannery users should be able to chat a quick line about defense.

However, your point is well taken. If everybody in Australia (for example) played a strong club, y'all would be caught unprepared for a natural system and I think you should be afforeded the opportunity to discuss a defense to my 1C bid showing clubs! Otherwise, we're just taking advantage of your ignorance. But I highly doubt that this is the case.

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If regular partnerships don't put in that time and effort, then I would argue that that is their problem. Even in casual or pickup partnerships, this should not be a major problem -it is possible to play easy generic defenses. The June issue of Australian Bridge, for example had an article on "One Size Fits All" - an easy generic defense to anything unusual you are likely to come across.

And because there are some pairs that don't put in that time and effort, the winningest bridge players aren't necessarily those who play the best, but could be those who play moderately well but play a system that only they understand.

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like the Ekrens 2H opening, which is derided by Paul.

Might be a good bid! But it's far better when played against opponents who will misunderstand each other's bids over it. OK, so your E-W opps are too lazy to defend it. Should that give you an advantage over another N-S pair that plays sound methods that the E-W pairs understand?

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No mention is made in the explanation as to whether opener has denied (for example) holding a 4 card Spade suit. No mention is made of whether opener would prefer to open 1D with 4-4 in the minors, or whether opener may have a singleton Heart on this bidding. This information is available if you press for it, but you have to know to press for it.

Indeed - it's far worse than that. When I play in the Stratified Pairs, the answers are almost always "I don't know", and when they do authoritatively answer, they are frequently wrong. Unfortunately, it's hard to know if they really do know and are just annoyed with your incessant questioning or if they're really that clueless. But I do know that most F2F opponents think my trying to find out what their bids mean is annoying. Since I rarely gain any useful information, I have given up. So, if you really do know something about your partner's bid that I don't know (pretty d**n likely), the clueless people have helped you immensely by making me assume that your answers aren't going to be right anyway.

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What do you suggest I do to make playing against unusual bids "not a major problem" for me and pick-up partner's from this side of the globe?

Simple. They play that junk, you get to chat your defense. If they get annoyed, they can go find another pair to play against. I would tend not to be annoyed if I played anything unusual (say Flannery ) and an opponent chatted a defense.

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Case in point: Helene wrote

>I don't think stringent definitions are necesary. If your experience
>is that opps can't defend themselves against your methods, they
>are obviously not well-known. This may apply even to a weak notrump,
>Jacoby transfers and Roman carding. Depends on the field. Here in
>the Netherlands there are people who don't know the defence against
>short minor suit openings ("is (1♣)-2♣ Michael's or natural?")

Quite honestly, I have no sympathy for these individuals what-so-ever. If players aren't willing to invest a modicum of effort, they have no right to be able to compete effectively.

Well, there's more Helenes in this world that play bridge just for fun than there are those of you that want to take advantage of them with your unfamiliar methods plus those of you studious enough to have countermeasures to anything that could come up. They don't want to be world champions. All they want is that if you're going to beat them, you do it by playing better, or having more solid agreements than they do, rather than trying to confuse them with conventions that they haven't discussed or even heard of.

[the hog]

"I say as long as I and my partner get 10 minutes to look at the system notes and figure out a defense and negative inferences I'm happy (and I'll settle for 5). I think there's a lot of room for compromise within those."

I have no problems at all with systems/recommended defenses etc being required to be submitted beforehand. In fact I would encourage it.


"Might be a good bid! But it's far better when played against opponents who will misunderstand each other's bids over it. OK, so your E-W opps are too lazy to defend it. Should that give you an advantage over another N-S pair that plays sound methods that the E-W pairs understand?"

Thats life. Does not just happen in bridge!
Anyway Paul, what about pairs who don't know what they are doing and get a good result against you that way. Or what about pairs who do know what they are doing but don't give you full disclosure - the same principle applies.
(fwiw most pairs in my neck of the wood play Acol - I would say at least 80%. Hardly any play sayc or 2/1 - serious question here to those who peculiarly tend to open 3 card suits in the minors rather than the far more natural 4, what is 1C 2C? A C suit or Micheals? I bet most Acol players have not thought this through.)

[paulhar]

The_Hog, on Aug 2 2004, 05:51 PM, said:

"I say as long as I and my partner get 10 minutes to look at the system notes and figure out a defense and negative inferences I'm happy (and I'll settle for 5). I think there's a lot of room for compromise within those."

Fact: If you get five minutes to prepare a defense and find the negative inferences, and you do that 13 times in a 26-board MP game, you add over an hour to the session.

Fact: Looking for negative inferences in someone's system notes is grueling work. If everybody is spending mental energy doing this, the quality of play and defense is going to suffer. Stamina issues will be much more prevalent. In a real MP game, sometimes you get to relax because you're dummy or the play doesn't make any difference - you just lead winners and hope the opps screw up. Now, every round could be potentially taxing as you search through system notes (which probably won't be in a consistent layout), and try to figure out the negative inferences. Then you have to discuss the defenses with pard.

While I think I might be better at this skill than your average tournament player, it would make the game a lot less fun and a lot more like work. If I have to dissect someone's system notes, I might as well spend the time dissectng a company's reports instead and make money doing it.

A lot of players would just as soon give up bridge rather than go through this. If you like small games, this is a good direction to go.

By the way, in my youth, my system notes were 63 pages! Try finding the negative inferences in 10 minutes!

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Thats life. Does not just happen in bridge!

Just because life is unfair doesn't mean we should strive to make bridge unfair.

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Anyway Paul, what about pairs who don't know what they are doing and get a good result against you that way. Or what about pairs who do know what they are doing but don't give you full disclosure - the same principle applies

Not really - they're going to confuse themselves more often than they're going to get me. What I'm concerned about is the pair that knows exactly what they're doing but people don't know how to defend against them.

I can see your point of view, but I don't agree with it. You're suggesting some game where anything goes and a major skill required is coming up with new undefended conventions & methods, and another major skill is defending against these. That's a playable game - I just don't think that many people want to play it.

[paulhar]

Some funny things could happen at these 'anything goes' tournaments. Pretend I'm a professional with all the tricks. I notice that those two MOSCITOs are one of the seeded pairs in my direction (N/S). On all the E-W chairs, I put a copy of my optimal MOSCITO defenses so that their opponents will be ready to handle 'em.

Of course, the timing has to be just right, otherwise one of the skeeters will pick them up and throw 'em out (or even better, replace them with some crappy defense with my letterhead on it!) Alternitively, they could opt to play some differnet bids they've been working on and totally confuse the recipiants of my handouts. Every good pair in this event will have two or three different systems ready to go, right?

[Free]

I wonder what the big problem with moscito openings is anyway... It's strong ♣ - easy defense, limited openings in transfer - so the 1♦ and 1♥ openings even give away more space for opps, and 2♣ is natural. A weak NT has it's own defense. The frelling two's are another story, but that's not really part of moscito since you can play anything from 2♦ and higher.

The only trouble opening imo is 1♠ which shows an unbalanced hand with 4+♦, which can have a bad 4 card M or longer ♣.

Go ahead with giving everyone defenses against that system, it's good enough to handle your defenses anyway

[hrothgar]

paulhar, on Aug 4 2004, 12:51 AM, said:

Some funny things could happen at these 'anything goes' tournaments. Pretend I'm a professional with all the tricks. I notice that those two MOSCITOs are one of the seeded pairs in my direction (N/S). On all the E-W chairs, I put a copy of my optimal MOSCITO defenses so that their opponents will be ready to handle 'em.

Of course, the timing has to be just right, otherwise one of the skeeters will pick them up and throw 'em out (or even better, replace them with some crappy defense with my letterhead on it!)

Why would I bother with anything this complicated. Its much easier to simply drug the coffee supply. Alternative, a lead pipe to the knee cap can really slow down the competition...

[skorchev]

I think the most important conventions are:

1st) Fit raises - j2nt, 2nt-limit raise, minisplinters, splinters, suit+fit, drury, pre-emptive raise, constructive raises, raises after 1M-DBL, inverted minor, etc.

2nd) The usual old Blackwood

3rd) The count singnals in defence

Stefan

[helene_t]

Free, on Aug 4 2004, 12:11 AM, said:

I wonder what the big problem with moscito openings is anyway... It's strong ♣ - easy defense, limited openings in transfer - so the 1♦ and 1♥ openings even give away more space for opps [....]

Yes, but how many opps in a pair's tournament fully exploit the extra defence possibilities offered by treansfer openings? My experience is 0% (I don't play Moscito but some conventions that are comparable with respect to this issue). You're probably playing in a stronger field than I am, but still.

Not that this is a big issue - as long as bread&butter defence works reasonably against Moscito. But if you really want to test how your methods perform compared to standard methods, you should make sure that opps have equably adequate defence against your methods as against standard methods.

[hrothgar]

helene_t, on Aug 25 2004, 08:46 AM, said:

>Yes, but how many opps in a pair's tournament fully exploit the extra defence
>possibilities offered by transfer openings? My experience is 0% (I don't play
>MOSCITO but some conventions that are comparable with respect to this issue).
>You're probably playing in a stronger field than I am, but still.

>Not that this is a big issue - as long as bread&butter defence works reasonably
>against MOSCITO. But if you really want to test how your methods perform
>compared to standard methods, you should make sure that opps have equably
>adequate defence against your methods as against standard methods.

Few comments here:

1. If the opponents need me to provide them with a defense to a given method, then that defense needs to be designed to be as simple as possible. A simple defense, though suboptimal defense that the opponents can assimilate easily is worth a LOT more that a highly complex "optimal" defense that will constantly be misapplied

2. Opponents who want to employ "optimal" defenses are going to need to invest some time/effort on their defensive bidding agreements. However, I rarely see this done by anyone but established International level partnerships. In most cases, the powers that be find it more convenient to simply ban methods that they don't happen to like.

3. I'd love to be able to test MOSCITO thoroughly in top level level play. Regretfully, I think that the major conclusions reached would be that my defense / declarer play is substandard, but so be it. With this said and done, members of the ACBL Conventions Committee have specifically stated that they are manipulating the regulatory structure to specifically prevent MOSCITO from being played in the United States.

[Yzerman]

Favorite Convention:

2 way-NMF (xyz checkback)

[keylime]

Got a new favorite convention, learned it here at the regional:

3NT = 5-5 or better in the majors

This hand type has come up SIX times in two full days. No, I'm not using it, but I like who is.

[Gerben47]

How strong is this 3NT, keylime? Is it a preempt?

[keylime]

My understanding is 7 to bad 11. I'll ask the pairs using it tomorrow.

[the hog]

This is a losing bid. Far better to play 2H or 2S as this sort of opening, Why pre empt everyone when you have the Majors.

Far better still is to play 2H or 2S as majors or minors, but I guess this is another banned convention in ACBL land.

[pbleighton]

"Far better still is to play 2H or 2S as majors or minors, but I guess this is another banned convention in ACBL land. "

3NT as 5-5 must have at least 10 hcp to be GCC legal, but maybe this was a midchart event.

I like cool-sounding premmptive bids but not this one. The opps don't have a major suit game they want to be in. Why do you want to play at the 4 level with a likely 8 card (maybe 9 card) fit to stop an improbable game?

If I was going to play it, it would be NV only with 0-4 hcp, but I still wouldn't be happy.

Peter

[ochinko]

Chamaco, on Jul 9 2004, 12:44 PM, said:

To name the best convention I will choose as criteria:
1) high frequency
2) high benefits
3) no memory burden

Hi everyone!

I couldn't agree more with the principles from parent's post.

To me best conventions are not isolated but come in packages like, for example, Michaels cue buds and unusual NT.

I am particularly fond of combining multi and Muiderberg. Multi is a 2♦ opening showing a 6 card major weak hand (no more than 3 cards in the other major, and at most one ace in the hand) or a strong balanced hand. Muiderberg is a 2♥/♠ opening showing exactly 5 cards in the bid major, and 4+ cards in unspecified minor (when vulnerable it is prefered that the minor contains 5 cards as well, or your HCP must be closer to the top of the weak hand that you described). Such weak hands come very often, and you are able to describe your hand immediately and accurately with an extra added value of preempting the opponents.

If your strong option of multi promisses 20-22 HCP you can now open 2NT with 5:5 in both minors and 8-10 HCP (make sure your partner wont get confused here though , and, of course, don't forget to alert and explain).

It gets even better when you add multilandy to these gadgets. Multilandy is a way to intervene after opponents open 1NT. 2♦ promisses a single major suit (like in multi), 2♥/♠ promisses that major and a minor (just like Muiderberg), 2NT promisses both minors (like unusual NT), double is for penalty, and 2♣ shows both majors (the only thing you have to remember if you already know multi and Muiderberg).

Another nice package follows the principle of fast arrival. It says that all jumps from the responder or overcaller are weak. Here we combine weak jump overcalls, weak jump shifts (when no intervention), Bergen raises, and reversed minors. Again, you describe your values precisely, quickly, and without unnecessarily exciting your partner. You enter and exit the bidding immediately leaving the opponents wondering whether to pass, double, or explore their own possibilities.

[Free]

Hi, welcome to the forum You'll notice that there are lots of other gadgets which are even better in some cases.

Btw, are you from Belgium or the Netherlands? They play a lot of multi-muiderberg and multi-landy stuff

[ochinko]

Free, on Sep 2 2004, 11:05 AM, said:

Hi, welcome to the forum    You'll notice that there are lots of other gadgets which are even better in some cases.

Btw, are you from Belgium or the Netherlands?  They play a lot of multi-muiderberg and multi-landy stuff 

Thank you

Actually, I'm from Bulgaria where indeed these gadgets are not that popular but I noticed that many Turkish and Italian players on BBO use multi and Muiderberg too. It seems that the American players are among the few that remain faithful to the traditional weak two openings. Wilkosz is cool as well.

[paulhar]

ochinko, on Sep 2 2004, 05:14 PM, said:

It seems that the American players are among the few that remain faithful to the traditional weak two openings.

There's a reason for that.

The improving player wants to practice bids that he's allowed to play in club games and tournaments.

Some people on BBO have partnerships that are both F2F and online. They don't want to play one system online and other F2F. And, here in the US, Multi, Muiderberg, etc. aren't allowed in F2F at most levels.

[paulhar]

ochinko, on Sep 2 2004, 05:14 PM, said:

Wilkosz is cool as well.

I just looked it up - I agree wholeheartedly, it's quite cool. If you played Wilkosz, would 2H & 2S be weak, or is there a better use for them?

I guess that an improvement would be 2D Wilkosz, 2H Ekrens, 2S normal weak (could be 5S + 4 card minor), give up on the weak 2 in hearts (open 3H if you have to )